LAUP professor earns research award, directorship from national landscape architecture council

A body of research exploring the relationship between landscape patterns and health earned Jun-Hyun Kim, an assistant professor of landscape architecture at Texas A&M, a prestigious award from a global educators’ group.

Kim, who joined the Texas A&M faculty in 2011, was presented with the Excellence in Research and/or Creative Works Award from [the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture] (http://www.thecela.org) in March 2015.

The highly competitive award, which Kim received during an annual CELA annual conference at Kansas State University, is based on a scholar’s overall research achievements and granted only once per career.

“Kim is systematically building a body of peer‐reviewed, funded scholarship to address what he has identified as a lack of research regarding spatial landscape patterns’ effects on people's physical and mental health,” said Forster Ndubisi, head of the [Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning] (http://laup.arch.tamu.edu) , in a nomination letter.

“He has established himself as a promising young scholar with a unique and focused research agenda that can bridge some of the critical knowledge gaps in environment-health literature,” said Chanam Lee, Texas A&M professor of urban planning.

Kim, whose work has been published in several top-rated journals, has co-authored seven peer-reviewed journal papers and authored 12 technical reports.

“Very impressive, especially for a junior faculty member who has a full teaching load that includes three studio courses per academic year,” said Ndubisi.

Kim, who is serving a three-year term as Region 3 [director] (http://one.arch.tamu.edu/news/2012/6/5/li-cela-honors/) for CELA, which advocates and provides a forum for landscape architecture education programs and fosters and disseminates landscape architectural scholarship.

He also earned a teaching [award] (http://one.arch.tamu.edu/news/2014/11/26/prof-montague-scholar/) in 2015 from Texas A&M’s Center for Teaching Excellence.